Posts tagged ‘photo editing’
Techniques 101
Wow, how time flies. I look up from my “real” job, and almost a week’s gone by.
The tutorial I mentioned in the last post is still in the works, but I realized that for novice Photoshoppers to really understand what I did, I’d have to spend some time explaining the techniques that I used. So, instead of doing it in one swell foop, we’re going to bone up on each technique individually. Each technique I show will correspond to a step in developing that photograph.
Tomorrow, we’ll start off with a quickie on how to use layers and masks. After that, you’ll want to pull out your MySpace photo because I’m going to show you how to quickly remove all of your unsightly blemishes. And it won’t even require you to freebase Proactiv Solution.
I apologize in advance to those of you who’ve been waiting with baited breath, but we’re going to be good kiddies and wait until Christmas to open this present. But unlike a Christmas present (and perhaps inappropriately, a little like a strip tease), the good news is that I’m gonna let you peek inside the package as we go along.
Can you see the difference?
(Hint: cover one half with your hand, then cover the the other side)
Some people have sent me comments telling me that they can’t see the difference between the photo processed using this technique and the original. This is both bad and good. Bad because it doesn’t look like I did anything, and good because that’s exactly what I intended. Let me explain.
Photographic enhancement techniques can ruin a good photograph in the same way that the over-application of fonts leads to gaudy, divergent designs. Although you could argue that an over-enhanced photograph is stylized, in most photo-retouching situations, you aren’t trying to stylize the photograph (of course, there are exceptions). You don’t want your viewers to say “wow, you’re good with Photoshop”—you want them to say “wow, I wish I could take a photo like that”. If your viewer can definitively say “after” is better than “before” but has difficulty articulating why, then you’ve succeeded.
Of course, your taste may be different than mine, but that’s part of the fun. Here’s the game you should play: how far can you push and prod a photograph without your viewer knowing anything was done to it?